


Stray

by linefaced



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 12:25:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4625280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linefaced/pseuds/linefaced
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanji’s the first to hear the cries, and leads the charge to the back of the building, where they discover him in a cardboard box with “Adopt Me” written on one of the flaps, a tiny grey kitten with beautiful yellow eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stray

**Author's Note:**

> An Anon on Tumblr sent me a request for Souji as a cat the IT adopts, and I liked the idea so much that fic came out.

It’s sheer coincidence that they find him together in the summer: Kanji’s buying ingredients to try and show Rise and Naoto how to cook, and Yukiko and Chie are visiting Yosuke and Teddie on their break. Kanji’s the first to hear the cries, and leads the charge to the back of the building, where they discover him in a cardboard box with “Adopt Me” written on one of the flaps, a tiny grey kitten with beautiful yellow eyes.

Surprisingly, Naoto’s the first to scoop him up, staring at him with an unreadable expression on her face.

“I will take him,” she says, with a strange determination.

* * *

Yosuke leads them all back to the pet department while Chie carefully hides him in her jacket, and Teddie uses his extra money to buy a small collar and a tag. Yosuke engraves the name on it without consulting the others, but no one objects, because they were all thinking the same thing. Yukiko takes the tag once it’s complete, hooks it through the jump ring on the collar, and clips it delicately around the kitten’s neck.

“There you go, Souji-kun.”

* * *

Naoto’s apartment is plain, so there’s no much for him to get into. Instead, he climbs; onto the couch, the counter, onto the stepstool she keeps around to reach the higher cabinets, into the bathroom sink. He finds places to tuck himself away, and every day when she returns home there’s a new mystery for her to solve.

She almost thinks he’s doing it on purpose.

But that’s illogical, it’s natural for kittens to be curious, but she finds that in a strange way she enjoys the way she has to hunt him down every afternoon. He somehow manages to never get himself into anything particularly dangerous, and never protests beyond one quiet, squeaky mewl when she pulls him out of his new hiding place. When she settles down in bed to read, he curls up next to her and sleeps, and occasionally she reaches down and scratches him behind the ears.

She doesn’t realize how much she’s enjoyed keeping him around until she gets word of work to be done in the city, and when she calls Rise to ask what she should do, she’s both relieved and disappointed when Rise says she can take him for a while.

* * *

Rise’s house is much noisier than Naoto’s apartment. The tofu shop downstairs is more popular than ever thanks to Rise’s presence, and instead of shying away from it, she’s taken to using it to their advantage. Her grandmother doesn’t approve of the kitten hanging around at first, but Rise promises to keep him away from the tofu, then sets him on a stool near the back and tells him to be good, and he doesn’t move from there for the entirety of their open hours, opting to curl up and sleep most of the time.

It isn’t long before the customers start noticing him there, and he gets squealed over and pointed out several times throughout the day. Rise makes him a tiny kerchief for his neck, and moves his stool a little closer to the register, so customers can coo over him. He seems to enjoy the attention.

At the end of every shift, Rise tosses off her apron and scoops him up, carrying him like a baby back upstairs to her room. There, it’s much quieter, and Rise usually turns on some music before settling down on her bed with him while she reads or checks her phone. She takes a lot of pictures of him.

Eventually, Inoue-san calls her, and tells her she needs to come back to the city to start seriously preparing for her comeback. She agrees, but she looks at the kitten on her bed with a sad expression, rubbing him under his chin as she murmurs into the phone, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with Souji-kun, though.”

“Huh? Souji-kun?” Inoue says, confused. “Did you get a boyfriend?”

He sounds a little worried and more than a bit frantic—Risette being in a relationship would be pretty big news and a lot of work for him, after all. She laughs when she realizes her mistake.

“No,” she reassures Inoue-san with a smile he can’t see. “He was just visiting for a while.”

* * *

He ends up at Kanji’s house next, and it’s there he also winds up being a sort of store mascot. Kanji stocks the counter with lint rollers, but he and his mother let Souji wander around as much as he likes. They enjoy his antics—tucking himself behind bolts of fabric, diving into baskets full of scraps, batting at thread. He only gets in trouble once for sharpening his claws on a roll of silk, but when he cringes as Kanji snaps at him in a panic, he’s quickly forgiven.

Kanji’s hands stay busy, and Souji gets a bed made out of extra pieces of cotton and stuffed with fabric scraps, a few handmade toys stuffed with catnip (presumably to keep his claws away from the more expensive items in the store), and a knitted kitten that looks almost exactly like him. When presented with the last, Souji initially attacks it viciously, much to the amusement of Kanji and his mother.

He’s well-fed here, because Kanji sneaks him scraps of fish from the table more often than not, and so does his mother, often without the other noticing. He grows rapidly in the two months he’s there, and Kanji often comments on it, grinning and scooping him up, holding them nose to nose and telling him how big he’s gotten.

He might’ve stayed there forever, but Kanji’s mother falls one day and breaks a leg. Kanji’s beside himself while she’s in the hospital, and keeps Souji close to him at the house whenever he’s not visiting her. She comes back in a wheelchair, and it’s with a reluctant, but a surprising amount of maturity that Kanji decides to call Yukiko next, telling her he can’t give the kitten enough attention when he needs to be focusing on his Ma, “plus school and all, I guess.” She comes over to pick him and his supplies up, and Kanji tries his best not to cry as he hands her a stuffed mouse made from extra chirimen fabric and tells her it’s Souji’s favorite toy.

* * *

Yukiko sneaks him into her room and tells him he needs to be quiet, whispering that her parents can’t know he’s there. Luckily, he’s never been a loud cat, and so while she rushes around and works, he stays in her room, batting at the toys from Kanji’s house or sleeping near the window.

He doesn’t eat as much as he ate at Kanji’s, but he eats better, because every day Yukiko brings him scraps from the Inn’s kitchen, leftover bits of fish or meat from guests’ meals, unsuitable for humans but great for cats. She’s meticulous about his care, picking all the bones out from the fish, brushing him daily and checking him carefully for fleas.

She talks to him a lot when she pulls out her futon and settles in to sleep, complaining about fussy guests asking for different rooms or drunk businessmen from out of town. She tells him he’s a good listener, and rewards him from a bag of treats she had Chie bring her from Junes. He always curls up next to her on her pillow, and she pets him with gentle hands until one or the other of them falls asleep.

She successfully manages to keep him a secret for a good three weeks, until another inn employee enters the room to check for something and finds him there. She’s afraid of cats, so she raises a ruckus that sends Souji bolting down the hall, fur ruffled and tail puffed. Yukiko catches him before he gets much further, and ducks into an empty guest room with him under her arm, apologizing to him under her breath as she pulls out her phone and calls Chie.

* * *

Chie also keeps him in her room, but isn’t secretive about it. Her parents seem doubtful about her ability to care for him, but she insists that cats are low maintenance and she can manage it.

She talks to him even more than Yukiko. She tells him about her day, gives him daily reports on how far she was able to run in the morning, and worries about how her third year in school is going. Whenever she pauses mid-ramble, he meows, as though to encourage her to go on, and she laughs and pets him and picks up a different topic.

She’s rougher with him, picking him up when he least expects it, or brushing him a little too hard, but she also plays with him more often, dangling toys in front of him or letting him climb all over her while she stretches before her daily jog. She announces that he’s going to be integrated into her training routine, and practices her reflexes by holding out her hand, then trying to pull back before he can bat her fingers. (Ignoring that this is also an excuse to put off her studying for a little while longer.)

When she finally settles down at night and turns on her favorite movies, he settles in with her, his eyes following the quick movements of the actors on the screen. She sneaks him pieces of popcorn as they watch, and often she’ll fall asleep mid-movie, jolting awake and startling them both before apologizing and rewinding to the last scene she remembers.

One Sunday morning he tries to follow her out her door when she leaves to go running, and comes face to face with Muku. It takes three hours and Yosuke and Teddie’s help to get him down from the tree he ends up in as a result, and after they pull him down, Chie sighs and rubs her face.

“Maybe I’m just not cut out for cats,” she says with resignation, and goes to bring his supplies out from her room.

* * *

Teddie’s ecstatic to have a new friend, and at first carries Souji wherever he goes within the Hanamura house. He brings him to the dinner table and sneaks him food, carries him into the bathroom while he sits in the tub, and at one point even tries to sneak him to Junes, but is quickly caught by Yosuke’s father, who gently scolds him and tells him to leave Souji at home. Teddie does, but spends every waking moment at the house shadowing the cat, and every night he brings Souji into the closet with him and—much to Yosuke’s annoyance—murmurs to him for at least an hour before going to sleep.

At one point, Yosuke gets fed up, and stands up from his bed to tell Teddie off and order him to be quiet so they could all get some sleep, but he stops near the closet door when he hears Teddie whisper, “I almost don’t miss the real thing when you’re here, Kitty-Sensei.”

Yosuke loses the heart to say anything, and goes back to bed.

* * *

As school picks up Yosuke spends less time at Junes and more time at home with Souji, his father insisting that he focus on his studies instead of a part-time job for now. His bedroom is spacious and there’s plenty of trouble for Souji to get into. He sharpens his claws on the edges of the manga anthologies, sits on Yosuke’s computer keyboard when he’s trying to browse the internet for his homework, manages to unplug the stereo when he’s got music playing, and develops a habit of trying to scale Yosuke’s legs whenever he’s sitting on the edge of his bed. The third time he attempts this last maneuver, Yosuke grabs him by the scruff of the neck and shakes him a bit.

“You’re really obnoxious, you know that?” He grumbles, but Souji just cries helplessly, and Yosuke heaves a resigned sigh and sets him on the comforter, then flops down himself, picking up a text book and opening it to an earmarked page. Souji wanders up near his head and tries to eat his hair. Yosuke flinches and grabs him again, rolling onto his back and holding Souji above his head while the cat squirms and cries.

“I don’t know why we named you that,” Yosuke mutters, staring at the tag dangling from the collar around the cat’s neck. “You’re nothing like him.” He starts to lower him back down toward the bed, and Souji swipes him across the face, leaving three neat parallel scratches along his cheek. Yosuke yelps and drops him, and Souji bolts under his bed, tucking himself against the far wall and growling softly.

“Damn cat!” Yosuke snaps, dropping down to his knees and reaching under the bed, grabbing Souji by his scruff and pulling him back out. Souji yowls and digs his claws into the carpet, but drags a strip of photos out from under the bed in the process, and Yosuke freezes at the sight of it. He lets Souji go, picking up the photo strip. Souji circles warily behind him, but Yosuke ignores him, focusing instead at the pictures in his hands.

“We went to Okina,” he says, quietly, “and took these. I remember…” He hesitates, taking a deep breath, and looking over his shoulder.

“Jeez, it’s not like you understand me. Why am I telling you?” He asks the cat, and Souji just stares at him. Yosuke stands up and then sits back down on the edge of the bed, continuing to stare at the photos, and eventually Souji jumps up next to him and, very cautiously, steps into his lap. Yosuke looks down at him for several long seconds, but then scratches him behind the ears, and Souji relaxes and curls up while Yosuke continues.

“I was really freaked out that someone might see us, and get the wrong idea or something. I mean, guys just don’t take print club photos together. But, y'know,” he pauses, and swallows hard, “I’m glad he made me do it anyway.”

The photo strip flutters to the floor, and Yosuke suddenly curls up, picking Souji up and hugging him tightly, shaking for several minutes and saying nothing as he sniffles and wipes his eyes on the cat’s fur. Souji doesn’t resist.

“Sorry,” he chokes out eventually, as though Souji could understand him, “I just… I just wish he’d  _been there_  when we woke up, you know? Or—god, of course you don’t know. You’re a goddamn cat, you don’t give a crap.” He sighs and mops at his eyes with the back of his arm, sets Souji on the bed, then flops onto his back and stares at the ceiling.

“It’d almost be one thing if he’d gotten, I dunno, hit by a car or something. At least we’d  _know_ , then. But he just…” Yosuke covers his eyes with his hands, and breathes slowly to try and calm himself.

“He just  _wasn’t there_  anymore. And the worst part is we couldn’t tell anyone about it. How the hell do you explain something like that? I mean, god, his parents must’ve…” Yosuke chokes again, and rolls onto his side, whimpering like he’s in pain, his hands fisting tightly into his own shirt. After a moment, Souji moves toward him, settling down near his head and beginning to purr softly. Cautiously, Yosuke opens his eyes, then reaches out and pulls him to his chest, stroking his fur and curling around him.

“I really miss him,” he whispers, and lets himself cry like he hasn’t since March.


End file.
